Smiling_Joe

Oh, but it is. If you've got enough recharge to get Light Form Perma, you also have perma Essence Boost.

And I will. Oh, I will.


Well, the point about AoE damage is a valid one. The question is: does that slight edge in AoE damage make Nova worth taking, or can Human Form kill single targets quicker with its fuller attack chain?

Add to that the fact that Novas' AoE attack chain is pretty much outclassed by virtually every other AoE archetype, and I'm definitely going to stay human.

Nova doesn't suffer as badly as Dwarf from being obviated, but its one advantage is still not enough to make it worth taking.

Fair enough, but when the rationale behind the changes to the powers was to normalize them with their Warshade counterparts (as the patch notes state) one expects at least normalized performance between Warshades and Peacebringers, which we haven't got.

And even though the functionality is different, the utility is the same. Peacebringer and Warshade builds just got a lot closer in terms of slotting, and the conditions for using them remain the only aesthetic difference.

And to those of us who don't care as much about performance as we do concept (and believe it or not I am one of those) their appearance is at least as important as their function. To all appearances we've taken a huge step toward looking like bright warshades.

And in return we're still only half as effective.

EDIT - and yes, I am aware of the duality of caring about the appearance of two powers for concept reasons while at the same time arguing that the forms should be more than just concept. I am who I am. I'm willing to live with the change to the concepts; I'm not willing to live with the forms being irrelevant.

DOUBLE EDIT - only I am apparently willing to live with the forms being irrelevant, since I'll most probably be going human form after Freedom launches. That's more me being resigned to it, though.

Black Dwarf doesn't need it. Eclipse gives resistances to all, and these can be capped with minimal effort and risk (yes, I KNOW you have to be in a group of enemies to use Eclipse, but you've got powers in both your primary and secondary that let you stun them, group them, stealth them and take their wallets. It's more than safe.)

What keeps Black Dwarf relevant is that (a) Human Form by itself does miserable damage on a warshade, and (b) eclipse doesn't come with Mez protection.

Light Form does. Human form Peacebringers can outdamage White Dwarf. Therefore there is no reason whatsoever to take White Dwarf. Unless you like teleport.

Thus the suggestion to give White Dwarf resistance to ALL damage. If Black Dwarf can act as a heavy scrapper and be the damage dealer, then let White Dwarf be the true tank.


EDIT - and notice that I didn't single out Bright Nova....

What's the point? With Light Form able to be made Perma, it will mean that human form - with one Dull Pain Clone, one Reconstruction Clone, accolades and moderate set investment will have roughly the same hit points, have mez protection, be more survivable, have access to pool toggles AND have far greater damage potential.

It isn't that Dwarf doesn't benefit - it's that it's just been made irrelevent.

Except that Nova gets its damage from an overcomplicated and obsolete formula designed to limit nova's damage potential with the damage cap. By using the 45% inherent boost to a nova's damage, nova form will cap out 45% quicker than human.

And when human form can outdamage nova anyway AND has a better attack chain AND is far, far more survivable, Nova is in the same position that Dwarf is in.

It benefits from the changes, but is made ALMOST irrelevant by them.

Except, you know, the whole "make build up last 30 seconds like mire" and "make Light Form not lock out the forms and be permable like eclipse" suggestions.

Which were, in case you hadn't noticed, just about the only ones that were listened to.

Where, specifically, are you getting that people are asking to make Peacebringers /WP or to give them Mindlink? Got a quote for me? Or is that just hyperbole?

It's not a matter of Peacebringers being unable to survive - ANY archetype is
"extremely survivable" if played correctly. It's a matter of performance. But before I go any further, let me (AGAIN) post the numbers that I did a few pages back that resulted from the numerical comparison between Peacebringers and their nearest kin Warshades:

This data is derived from two spreadsheets:

Peacebringer Analysis

Warshade Analysis

Feel free to check the math if you're so inclined.

Now that that is out of the way, I've numerically proven that - even with the changes - Warshades will still be more survivable than Peacebringers (Just barely, due partly to the Psi resistance in Eclipse but also to the harmony in their mitigation tools) AND they will SUBSTANTIALLY (read that as: INSANELY TO THE POINT OF INSULTINGLY) out-damage Peacebringers.

But let's not quibble over the subjectivity of phrases like "okay damage" and "extremely survivable." Let's not look at anything but Peacebringers.

Is it balanced at all to you that human form can cap its own damage resistance and give itself even limited mez protection on a potentially permanent basis when that was ostensibly what dwarf form was supposed to give us? When human form outperforms dwarf form to the extent that dwarf form becomes only marginally better in only one area (slightly better mez protection) then it's out of balance in my opinion. But I'll lay dimes to dollars that you personally don't care about dwarf form. Just a hunch on my part.

But what about nova form? Look at the damage numbers. Human form out-damages nova form against single targets, and nova is only marginally better at aoe (and it also has knockback). Now that Solar Flare can be used from the air, even the flight advantage is marginalized. Seem balanced to you?

Judging by this part, however:
I have a feeling that you play exclusively in human form. In which case the changes ARE awesome. I'll be joining you soon.

You think you're funny. But one dark night you'll be on a pug, and when you least expect it I'll be ON UR TEAM, KNOCKIN' ALL UR SKULZ OUT OF KILLZ RANGE!!!111!!!!

Light Form has always had status protection. Before these changes, it was balanced because Light Form locked you out of forms, whereas an eclipsed Warshade could always go Dwarf to break mez.

Now? ::shrugs::

I'm already on record wondering what Arbiter Hawk is thinking.

Whoa, there, cowboy! I'm sick of spreadsheets, not Peacebringers! I'm not abandoning the archetype or anything so dramatic as all that. The most dramatic thing I intend to do when these changes go live - and I believe they will go live as is - will be respeccing out of my two non-human forms and rocking a human form build.

....which is saddening in it's own way, since I've long been a tri-form enthusiast. There's just not enough of a reason to take the forms now.

This. AT FIRST GLANCE, that IO is the most poorly designed piece of faldercarp I've seen come down the pike since I started playing this game six years ago.

Like Zenyth says, Essence Boost + Dwarf Form puts a Peacebringer at the hit point cap, and they want to give dwarf form more Hit Points?

Nova can't cap damage quite so easily (With effective slotting, it still takes Inner light in conjunction with six tankers, defenders or masterminds on the team for an SO'd Nova to cap its damage outside of external damage buffs) but even that is ridiculously underwhelming.

But given the changes they just made to light form, giving human form more resists is the absolute DUMBEST design decision I've seen in a long while.

Or at least it would be, if what is in that image is all there is to those IO's. That's why I can't believe that's all there is to it. Nobody's that stupid.

I know you can pass the damage cap with proc effects - I wonder if there is some way to bypass the hit point and resistance caps as well?

I just can't believe that even made it off the drawing board without somebody on the developer side at least looking at the caps. They had to have taken that into account in some way we haven't guessed.

Maybe they're raising the caps.


....too soon? (yes, that last sentence was a joke)

To me, it says they're done with Peacebringers for a while, and aren't really interested in our feedback at this point.

If anyone is curious, I copied/modified the spreadsheet that reflected the new Peacebringers so that it now shows what kind of damage and survivability we would get on a team with three support archetypes and three damage archetypes.

If you're curious, it's here.

Feel free to copy it to your desktop and play with the number of team members on each page. Hell, feel free to plug your own build in (the damage and resistance numbers will cap where appropriate).

Otherwise, read on for the relevant numbers:

With three "support" characters on the team, the example build's human form damage potential looks like:

Single Target: 143
AoE: 204

Nova's is:
Single Target: 121
AoE: 232

Dwarf's is:
Single Target: 102
AoE: 166

The survivability goes up as well, but in the interest of brevity I'm just going to let the curious click the link and look for themselves.

I'm not going to bother to do a warshade counterpart this time. We all know about what it would show.

This is probably my last spreadsheet on the topic. Pretty sick of doing them, to be honest.

I'd heard that as well - which is good news if your target is still alive. If your target's a corpse, however, will it still fail to summon an essence if it disappears mid-cast?

::shrug:: I don't mind spending the .5 seconds it takes to chase enemies down, or the .5 seconds it takes to position to knock them into a wall or something. I also don't mind punching them where they fall, should they be knocked down.

Punch'em here, punch'em there. Makes no difference to me, so I won't mind one way or the other.

But I also don't buy the kd=overpowered argument. On another set and archetype - like Electric Melee, for example - it makes more sense. Oh, wait. Electric Melee does knockdown, doesn't it? So all of those EM/Shield scraps and brutes aren't overpowered compared to other sets in their archetype?

Oh, wait. Shield Charge does knockdown too, doesn't it?

Huh.

I think I would be fine with CB as it is if it weren't for the way that it works with Nova Form. Because Nova works by granting access to the four attacks AND a 45% damage boost, that means that Nova smashes its head on the damage ceiling 45% faster than the other two forms, and also means that Bright Nova (and Dark Nova) gets far less benefit from reaching the damage cap than the other forms. A damage-capped nova is only slightly more powerful than a damage-capped human.

Remove that 45% damage boost and translate that power directly to the nova attacks, and you've got a much more balanced picture between the forms, and can THEN adjust the overall damage with more predictable results.

But my point is that a Peacebringer really doesn't have many options outside of that second AoE. Hit Solar Flare/Luminous Detonation, and THEN what? I suppose if SF did knockdown you could hit Dawn Strike or Photon Seekers, but those are "spawn killers." They'd kill the spawn if they're the second attack just as easily as if they're the third attack. In fact, to use them as a third attack would just waste the excess damage potential. Proton Scatter is a cone, so you'd jump back out to use it anyway. In fact, I'd argue that the knockback in SF actually works to Proton Scatter's benefit.

I suppose Pulsar could be thrown in on a knocked-down spawn, but what's stopping me right now from hitting that first, THEN hitting Solar Flare and a second attack? Nova and Dwarf form each has one AOE, but the animation time (2.224 seconds arcanatime, or thereabouts)

My point is that PEACEBRINGERS aren't going to be that much more powerful if SF is changed to KD, because they don't have enough AoE attacks in human form to leverage the advantage, and switching to forms only yields two more at the cost of almost five seconds wasted just animating the shape shift.

Would it give us more tactical options? Sure. Would it overpower our damage capabilities? I'm not seeing how.

But - as I said - I don't really have a row to hoe in the argument, because I don't see how (outside of the annoyance factor) having kd in Solar Flare instead of kb would really benefit us all that much.

[/quote]

Actually, after reading what you said about keeping IO's in mind, I can kinda see what Arbiter Hawk was thinking. With IO builds you're going to have a PERMANENT 30-ish percent buff to damage across all forms, the catch being that you have to drop to human periodically to claim it. You're also going to have some sort of PERMANENT mez protection across all forms, and some pretty significant damage resistance across all forms. Again, you're going to have to drop to human form to claim it.

It's almost as if he was afraid we'd never feel the need to drop to human form, so he sort of tried to force the issue by tying those two powers to human form specifcially. (And also why we'll never likely see Inner Light clickable in forms)

Problem with that is that he really didn't give us any reason to switch to the forms in the first place. The shields toggle off when in form, so dropping to human form is going to mean lesser resistances if and until you get the toggles back up. Dwarf doesn't give any real damage resistance that can't be attained from taking all three shields with perma light form, and now that human form only gives slightly less mez protection than it did I won't even need to use Dwarf to break mez.

There's slightly more reason to go nova for AOE potential, but even that can be eclipsed by human form's newfound single target damage.

It's not that the forms are somehow less balanced than they were, it's just that there's so much more incentive given now to stay in human form that Nova and Dwarf have become inconvenient.

Depending on who I'm fighting, I have that now with Void Judgement.

It's actually really funny, and I've laughed out loud multiple times over it:

As an ancient history buff, the ITF is my favorite TF in the game. Many is the time lately that I"ve run first into a room full of spawns in the first mission only to have someone with Ionic cast it from the door and kill every. single. Roman. in the room before I can close on the first spawn.

Okay, fair's fair. Next room I know that player's judgement isn't recharged, so I jump in and hit my Tier 4 Void Judgement.

Miss! MISS! Miss! Miss! MISS!! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! Miss! MISSITY-Miss! Miss!

"Aw..... stupid Cimeroaran Phalanx Fighting."

Then the scrapper shield charges my spawn.

"Aw...."

Ya gotta admit there's no small amount of humor there. Right? Right??

I do still love that TF, though.

Okay, threadjack over. Nothing to see but dead Romans here.

I can do that right now with Photon Seekers/Dawn Strike, and BOTH powers deal massive knockback.

I also find it quite funny that the developers are worried about knockdown making Peacebringers do too much damage in a world where powers like Shield Charge and Lightning Rod can coexist with Judgement attacks that can decimate MULTIPLE SPAWNS with one cast (looking at you, Ionic Judgement).

True, my PB has a tier 4 judgement power (although I'm still wrapping my head around the logic that said Ioninc being autohit AND doing twice the damage of the other powers is balanced based on the chance - that was brought significantly down - that it might not jump to another mob).

But if they're okay with THOSE levels of damage, then why draw the line at something as silly and comparably inconsequential as changing the knockback in a mediocre aoe to knockdown?

O.o

...for human form.

That being said, give Nova comparable direct damage to the powers in lieu of the 45% damage boost and give Dwarf Psi resistance and I'd have MUCH less opinion.

From a set of numbers resulting from a flawed equation. In other words, I'm wrong. After the excitement of seeing my favorite archetype receiving a buff finally wore off, I got some sleep and looked at my numbers again. One factor was missing in the new weighted build up equation for Bright Nova, resulting in making it appear that it had less damage potential than it had.

Um... sorry? 'Cause the numbers were really skewed as a result. REALLY skewed.

Originally I posted that Nova's Single Target Damage Potential was 88 dps. With the correct formula in place that number now sits at 101 dps (which is still 16 dps below the human form's score of 117). Where the AoE potential before the correction was 173 dps, it's now more correctly stated as 196 dps (compared against the human form's 170)

So. To Flux Vector and Grey Pilgrim: my bad. To the developers: really sorry about that.

Great. Now I have to go back and edit all my posts with the correct data. Stupid, stupid Joe.

HOWEVER, I do think Nova should have more damage potential than that. My reasoning is that a Nova can cap its damage much, much quicker than human form. My wish for Nova form is that the 45% damage boost be removed and a balanced amount of that damage be added directly to the attacks. That way Cosmic Balance won't cap Nova's damage potential quite so easily.


But my point is that I can do that right now! So long as the flying bodies are still within range of my follow-up's aoe when I start the animation, they'll still take the damage, even if they're across the room and back on their feet when the animation finishes. The MOST I would be able to do with KD verses KB is throw in one more PBAoE after the second, because Luminous Detonation, Photon Seekers and Dawn Strike all would still do KB. I suppose I could pop off a Pulsar before I laid down the second AOE, but that doesn't really add to my damage potential.

That being said, the KB in Solar Flare doesn't bother me one way or the other. I'm just not seeing how KD would give human form that much extra damage potential.

Wait, what? Knockback has always been sold to us as a mitigation tool that we should learn to use and be happy about. In other words, it's there to make us even more powerful through mitigation. Entire sets are based on knockback as a mitigation tool, but Arbiter Hawk's rationale of knockdown in solar flare making Peacebringers overpowered would seem to indicate that he views it - at least in this case - as a negative balancing factor. In other words, it's there to rein in our power.

How ironic.

I'll grant you that the activation times of the human blasts could come down, but even as they are they're not so far below the nova blasts to merit taking nova.

You're right - I will argue that nova's attack chain prevents it from competing with human form's dps. If I can't pull out pure damage numbers and look at those exclusively, then I'm not going to let you focus solely on dpa.
So your answer is to just buff human form in a vacuum and ignore the other two forms altogether?

Have you considered that improving nova form would give the developers more leeway to improve the human form's ranged dpa numbers? The design might be flawed and clunky, but - like it or not - we're shapeshifters. We should have the option to play effectively in human form, but we should also have the option to benefit from having three forms. The current changes take that benefit away, and I refuse to accept the forms as some vestigial token. You've fought bitterly for years to promote the viability of human form, and now that you have that viability you seem to be saying that the other two forms should suffer the same fate.

You didn't want to settle for two-thirds of an archetype, and I'm not going to settle for one-third. We have three forms. They should ALL have benefits.

I'm not saying the current changes shouldn't go live - I'm saying that outside of the light form change they're not giving peacebringers enough overall benefit to merit what they're doing to the forms. I'm willing to play human form for now and be patient for other changes - but I'm drawing a line in the sushi: these changes need to be followed up with buffs to the forms.

And yet looking at the numbers (and my own personal experience, having taken them and used them quite liberally myself) they hit every bit as hard as nova attacks. IMHO the notion that the human form ranged attacks are anemic is left over from the days before Castle increased human form's ranged modifier.

In other words, the anemic quality of human form's ranged attacks is a myth in today's game - perpetuated by those of us who remember what they used to be and refuse to see them any other way, even in the face of numbers proving us wrong.

You are, of course, free to dispute the numbers. Maybe there's something there that I'm missing, but from a purely damage standpoint they're roughly equal to the nova attacks even after nova's inherent damage boost is taken into account.

Oh yeah, that's right. Well, okay insert combat jumping for better air control. Either way.

For whatever reason I'm responding to things in random order today, but wanted to address this:

From the spreadsheet I linked to, Nova (with the inner light power accounted for and normalized) has the following powers/damage:

Bolt: 95
Blast: 157
Scatter: 155
Detonation: 141

Human form (also normalized for inner light) has the following ranged powers/damage:

GE: 107
Blast: 176

When I plugged in a moderately slotted Scatter and Detonation, they looked like this:

Proton Scatter: 146
Luminous Detonation: 122

Now maybe the nova does have a little bit of an edge, but I wouldn't call that anemic damage comparatively. Add in leadership toggles, two heals, melee powers and shields to stack with light form and there's really not much reason to worry about shifting into nova to do ranged damage.

And only one of those ranged attacks does knockback as well.

EDIT - and don't forget the aerial precision you're going to have from the new power added that only benefits human form. (which is ironic since nova's fly is inherent)

I do that now. So long as they haven't traveled outside the radius of the follow-up power it still hits, regardless of where they are when the damage is applied. Photon Seekers --> Dawn Strike would never be a possible combo otherwise.

And even if you could continue AoE damaging a knocked down spawn with a third and even a fourth attack it still wouldn't even come close to bringing us up to par on the damage scale, so arguing that changing knockback to knockdown would solve all or even the majority of our problems (which was the post I was responding to) is a straw man argument that scapegoats knockback for what are in reality a number of problems that need addressed.

It won't solve even half our problems.

How so? Peacebringers would still be doing less damage and won't be any more survivable.

In fact, given that knockback provides a healthy amount of personal soft mitigation, they would be less survivable.

Ask to change kb to kd because it annoys you, but arguing that it will magically fix our performance issues isn't going to hold water.

I know there's an answer to the poster's question in there somewhere, but I'm scotched if I can find it.

I'll take an honest stab at it, though: Why should you go nova?

Because you like it.

Outside of IO's, you're not going to do any better in nova than you can in human with the changes currently on test. EDIT - not completely true. My math was wrong. You're still going to do a little better at AOE damage with Nova, but only by about 23 dps. But you're not going to do any worse, either. If you like nova, go with it. One thing worth pointing out is that inherent fitness will combine with nova's recovery boost to give you more endurance.

Now, if you take IO's into account, you're going to have options. Nova can slot a performance shifter proc, so you'll have even more endurance than you would in human form. Nova's got an inherent tohit buff, so not as much accuracy is going to be needed in the attacks. Therefore you can slot for set bonuses as needed, or - even better IMHO - use the extra slots for procs. Achilles' Heel, Force Feedback and Explosive Strike procs are all good ones and will fit into every attack, giving you an almost guaranteed chance of resistance debuff, +recharge and extra damage with every attack chain cycle. Positron's Blast will slot into the aoe's for even more damage, and Decimation will slot into the ranged for a chance to hold.

Yep, my current recommendation for Nova enthusiasts is to proc that sucker out, now more than ever.

The biggest advantage Nova has over human form now isn't damage - it's proc potential.

Yes, that has not changed - peacebringers do slightly more damage now than they did.